


We'll Build a Treehouse

by fanforfanatic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 09:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanforfanatic/pseuds/fanforfanatic
Summary: You and Dean move into a new place and, in most ways, it’s a step down from the bunker.





	

In most ways it's a step down from the bunker, the house you and Dean decide to settle down in.

It's newer than the bunker is, built in the fifties, but it feels older. Not the decor, or the style of its architecture, but in the way every single door groans when it's opened or closed. Some wallpaper panels are peeling- _easy fix,_ Dean had said when you first moved in, but you still haven't gotten around to it.

The stairs creak, but that isn't all bad because makes you two hear each other coming which helps you both not be so on edge, after a lifetime of nothing but the edge, edge of a cliff, of a knife, of the world. You’re agile enough to figure out where to step to keep the wood from giving and bending under your feet, to remain quiet, but neither of you ever does. Even that one Christmas when you knew Dean was secretly wrapping presents in the guest bedroom. In fact, you made your footfalls all the more deliberate for his sake, a heads up of sorts.

The floor isn’t levelled which you noticed the first time you played the game of mini golf Dean had bought as a joke. He complains each time you bust it out, only ever on rainy days, but helps you move the coffee table and ottomans- because you’re the kind of people that have ottomans, now- anyway. Dean swears up and down that a mistake was made when the house was built. He goes so far as to ask Sammy, living back East now, if you could sue.

You don’t like that. You don’t like that he thinks there’s something integrally wrong with your home and you tell him so. He doesn’t speak about the floors again, and the next time it rains, he takes out the mini golf set himself.

There are other things the bunker has that this house doesn’t. Multiple showers for one, but you and Dean learn to share. The arguably sinister but definitely convenient dungeon. Then again, you don’t have much use for it anymore.

Something the bunker will never have is windows.

The first time Dean drove you to visit the house, he’d seen it before you and decided it was perfect, he pulled out all the stops to convince you of that fact. He went on about the large yard that had trees- _we can put a hammock in,_  he two-car garage he thought he could make a workshop out of- _we’re going to need hobbies if we’re going to retire, baby_ , the extra bedroom- _for when Sammy visits from school_ , the neighbourhood that was perfect for raising kids- _forget the hammock, we’ll build a treehouse._ You knew he had never really planned on a hammock.

It was kind of pointless, it’s not like you were picky, it’s not like you were going to put your metaphorical foot down and tell Dean to _keep looking, this house just won’t do_. You were willing and ready to go wherever Dean wanted to take you. Still are. You let him go on about the house anyway.

Only when you pulled up to it did Dean shut up so he could watch you take it in. You could picture the lawn looking half decent, if you put in the time. All the porch needed was a pair of wicker chairs to make it truly picturesque. The mailbox had a red lever, something you’d seen in illustrations but never in real life. You were on board. Then, you saw the windows and you were more than on board, you were sold.

They were wide and high and, in what would be the living room, they stretched from the floor all the way to the ceiling. They breathed in the sunlight and breathed life into the house, making it glow from the inside out. It looked, for a moment, like that home you had dreamt of as a kid, curled up on yet another motel bed.

The window above the sink in the kitchen even had a ledge and you decided right then that you would learn to bake pies if only to place them there. _We’re going to need hobbies if we’re going to retire, baby._ When he’s right, he’s right.

You thought you couldn’t love this place- _your place-_ any more, until you do. It happens when you start printing out old pictures. You’d had a habit of taking them on whatever crap phone of the week you were using, back when you were hunting. Dean used to tease you about it, mostly just for the sake of messing with you but sometimes it was bitter, coming from a place of sadness. He’d say that there was nothing worth documenting in their lives.

Still, when a Big Bad, few years back, got tech savvy and you and the Winchesters needed to go deep deep underground, barely ever using a computer, nevermind cell phones that weren’t burners, Dean went and bought you a polaroid camera. It was a discontinued model, so tracking down the special paper to refill it was a bitch, but you managed. Sometimes you went to replace the empty roll with one a new one you’d just bought, only to find someone had already done it.

It happens, the falling more in love with your place, when you buy a fancy new printer that connects to the internet all on its own. It even has bluetooth options which is what has you riffling through the pouch where you keep the fake IDs and fake credit cards and fake passports, fake everything… just in case. You and Dean are retired, you aren’t stupid. The bag also holds the old phones you couldn’t bring yourself to part with just in case someone who has the misfortune of knowing one of your numbers also has the misfortune of needing to use it. Dean keeps them charged, and it’s one of those mysteries for you, because you never actually see him do it.

You dig some out and once you figure out how to print pictures directly from the phones you get a little trigger happy. By the time Dean comes home, that night, you’re surrounded by at least a hundred photographs. Dean shakes his head, barely surprised by where the day has led, and joins you on the floor.

You spend all night going through the photos together, holding them over your faces as you lay on your backs. You laugh as you reminisce about the good times and you think Dean is a little stunned to find that he’s had so many. They must have snuck up on him, he says. You promise him that there are more to come and he believes you.

You have a brief conversation about picture frames but somehow the two of you end up taping the photos on the peeling wallpaper. You cover the entire wall and it looks mostly like a mess until it’s done. Finished, the disarray looks almost purposeful. Neither of you thinks you’ll be keeping the pictures up, in any case.

The next morning, you rush down the creaking steps, Dean hot on your heels, yelling for you to give him back his hair gel and laughing all the while. You come to a sudden halt, when you enter the living room. Your giggle- because you’re the kind of person who giggles, now- dies on your lips. Dean comes crashing into the room, loud and dareyouthinkit childlike, and stops just as abruptly as you had because of the same sight.

The early sun, still a little reddish from its slow and steady ascent in the sky, shines into the room, through the big windows- you never close the curtains- and warms the already rich wood. The room is lit up in a way that reveals how dusty the floor has gotten. You can even see the dust that dances in the air before resting on an available surface momentarily only to somehow float back up again in the still room.

The sun also brightens up every single photograph that the two of you spent the night putting up. A lot of them are taken from the backseat of the impala and feature both Sam and Dean, either with goofy faces on or the comically serious ones they sport whenever they argue like brothers do. Some are just of Sam, he’d made it a habit of sending you guys I’m-alive-and-well photos when he went back to school and he’s kept it up, even now. It was mostly for Dean’s peace of mind but you could tell Sam was having fun with it from the start, each picture more ridiculous than the last, each smile brighter and wider.

Some of the pictures are selfies and you remember cajoling Dean into agreeing to take them. Cas didn’t have to be coerced but his are mostly close-ups of his chin. Some of the pictures are group photos, you and Dean and the few friends you managed to make throughout your intertwined lives. The faces of those you didn’t managed to keep around, most of the faces, smile into the room, illuminating it like they’re hiding bits of the sun behind their teeth.

Nothing has ever looked quite so right to you as that room did just then and that’s when you fall more in love with this home of yours. You know that you won’t be taking the pictures down any time soon. Dean knows it too.

He wraps his arms around your hips from behind and places his chin on your shoulder. He lets out a content sigh and says, “I’ll get the tin box with the polaroids, later.”

That’s also when you fall a little more in love with Dean. Something else you hadn’t thought was possible.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is cool. You can be cool too.


End file.
